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Biography

Gluecksohn-Waelsch was born in Danzig, Germany to Nadia and Ilya Gluecksohn. She grew up in Germany between World War I and II, where her family faced hardships including her father's death in the 1918 influenza epidemic, severe post-war inflation, and intense anti-Semitic sentiment.[2][3]

She went on to become a lecturer at Columbia University in 1936, bringing embryological acumen to Leslie C. Dunn's genetics laboratory, where she remained for 17 years.[3] Gluecksohn-Waelsch attempted to find mutations that affected early development and discover the processes that these genes affected.

In 1938, she acquired US citizenship, and after Schönheimer´s death in 1941 she married the neurochemist Heinrich Waelsch in 1943, with whom she had two children.[3]

Columbia University's policies would not allow her a faculty position, even after many productive years of research.[2] She left Columbia University in 1953 to commence a professorship in anatomy at the newly founded Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM), where she became a full professor in 1958 and held the chair of molecular genetics from 1963 to 1976.[2] She received emeritus status in 1978, but continued researching actively for many more years, publishing and participating in scientific conferences until the 1990s.

Scientific career

Gluecksohn-Waelsch worked on the genetics of differentiation, the process by which unspecified cells from a fertilized egg adopt their various specific fates in development. As Gluecksohn-Waelsch combined the embryological expertise she had acquired at Spemann´s lab with methods of classical mouse genetics, she is considered the founder of mammalian developmental genetics.[6] She co-authored over 100 publications on developmental genetics.

Her research showed that mutations in the Brachyurygene of the mouse caused the aberrant development of the posterior portion of the embryo and she traced the effects of this mutant gene to the notochord, which normally patterns the dorsal-ventral axis.